XRP has again lost its place as the fourth largest cryptocurrency, with lawsuits against Ripple after one of its key investors followed the SEC by filing a complaint about the project.
According to a Bloomberg report on January 6, Tetragon, one of the leading investors in a $ 200 million C-Series financing round for Ripple in 2019, has filed a lawsuit against the firm in the Delaware Chancery Court.
The investment firm claims it is requesting a court to ‘enforce its contractual right to redeem Ripple’. In addition, the firm is asking the court to prevent Ripple from using “no cash or other liquid assets” until the case is settled.
Ripple responded to the allegations, claiming that the lawsuit had “no merit” and accused Tetragon of using a lack of clarity about regulations in the United States to file the case.
The firm’s executives have previously criticized regulators in the US – and hinted that the company would move its headquarters out of the country to flee from the United States’ “regulation through enforcement”.
Amid lawsuits from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, and now Tetragon, XRP has lost its position as the fourth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. According to data from CoinMarketCap, XRP’s market capitalization of $ 10.3 billion is behind Litecoin’s $ 10.5, while LTC has grown by 26% over the past seven days, while XRP’s market capitalization has stagnated. Litecoin only ‘flipped’ XRP on Sunday, but it was a short-lived step.
In December, the SEC, Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, and Chris Larsen, co-founder, accused them of conducting an “unregistered, ongoing digital security offering for digital assets” for their XRP sales. The case is scheduled for a virtual conference in February.
Following the news, crypto exchanges including Coinbase, Bittrex, OKCoin, Bitstamp, OSL, Beaxy and CrossTower have distanced themselves from XRP. Some have announced that they will discontinue trading for XRP, while others will remove the sign altogether.
At the time of publication, the price of XRP is $ 0.22, which has fallen by 70% since the end of November.
Cointelegraph asked Tetragon for comment, but received no response during publication.